Why European central banks are hauling their gold out of North America
Why are European countries moving their gold out of North America?
The Dutch central bank moved 86 tonnes of gold from the US and Canada to London, citing geopolitical unrest and a need to be "better prepared for severe crises." France and Germany have also repatriated gold in recent years. Experts say inflation, interest rates, and the ease of trading in London are key factors, not just fear of impending doom. Central banks have been buying record amounts of gold, driving prices to historic highs.
We expect that we will never need to use them, but we do need to strengthen our resilience and preparedness.
- thelastgallon
Any country that keeps gold in US or dollar reserves may end up looking very foolish. Sanctions and asset (financial and real) forfeitures coming soon to a country near you.
The simplest and easiest geopolitical strategy that is available to any country: switch completely to renewables (solar, maybe wind), EVs, green hydrogen/ammonia and synthetic fuels. Keep out of oil and natural gas. Keep out of dollar system. Any country can be immune to geopolitical drama, dollar shenanigans. Remember China has export restrictions on oil. When things get tough, most of the oil countries (with refining capacity to export) are going to have export restrictions. Thats the only way to deal with the mobs in their own country.
From: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KPq7jyQcemA
Richard Campbell: Politicians aren’t going to do things that aren’t popular, so we have to make these solutions popular for there to be a chance to build political will.
Richard Campbell: Corporations are inherently conservative, and power companies doubly so. Until there is a public groundswell demanding these changes, they won’t act. It’s up to us to make enough noise and show that these are good solutions worth pushing forward.
- Alien1Being
Because keeping your national gold reserves in a Mafia state run by a arbitrary kleptocratic elite is a very bad idea.
At this point international trust in the USA is at around the same level as trust in Iran and Russia .
China handily beats the USA in the trust rankings in most of the world.
- raffraffraff
I suppose it could turn very bearish in the next few years?
Something always occurs to me whenever I think about climate change. I think, "What is prosperity?" and the answers are mainly centered on stability and security. Not "stock market" stability, or "national security" but...
Weather stability (floods, droughts, severe storms that lead to crop loss or yield reduction, wildfires, power outages and destruction).
Food and energy security (crop loss or low yields leading to scarcity, food / gas / electric price increases etc)
When I think about my family I think: first priority is to guarantee shelter, food and basic comforts. Everything after that is important of course, but without those three things, it all tastes like ashes. I can't pretend to be happy without stability.
We can pretend that AI and GoogleAds are a great way to measure "prosperity" but in reality, if there's a threat to the basics, we can't pretend to be prosperous. "Value" can be destroyed very quickly when the foundations are gone.
I don't have any more detail than that. I'm a lowly infrastructure engineer. I don't go any deeper than those shower thoughts.
But is Europe looking at the state of the world and pulling it's reserves closer-to?
- cc62cf4a4f20
Because America can’t be trusted.
- oleg_antonyan
Russia had assets in Europe, look what happened to those. We got so naive and relaxed in the abscense of big wars within the "western hemisphere" that some people geniunly forgot what will happen to all of their "assets" when shit hit the fan.
- grey-area
The end of the US hegemony and the unstable regime in the US makes decoupling the best strategy.
- helsinkiandrew
Good opportunity to post Periodic Videos tour of a Bank of England vault:
- ArtTimeInvestor
The dangerous situation we are in is that entities outside of the USA hold significantly more US assets than US entities own assets outside the USA.
So if the USA declares "ownership be damned", it would be a net win for the USA.
Or in simpler terms: The USA has been giving out IOUs for real goods for decades. It is now tempting to default on those IOUs. The USA did this before. Up until 1971, a dollar certified a claim to gold. Then the USA simply canceled that promise.
The current ramp up to AI dominance might be what holds the USA back from breaking more ties with the world. It is a race that must be won. And investments from abroad help. But when the whole world is operated by US AI factories things might look different. When every task around the world is performed by intelligence generated in the USA, just like every computer is run by US software now - there might be little incentive left to "pay the rent" for the rest of the world that now sits around idle, fiddling their thumbs.
- aurareturn
If there is ever a conflict, US will seize assets of whatever country it is fighting with.
- Keyframe
I'm more interested in why was it centralized (there) in the first place? So it's easier to trade where when you make a sell/buy IOU is exchanged and a sticker on the bar is put or a bar changes pallet? I'd kind of understand that except these are central banks - how often do they even trade gold? Since we're in 2026, I actually googled that last question and it turns out central banks trade or adjust their gold reserve on a monthly basis. Somehow the thought of that seemed to me as too much of a high frequency trading for a central bank :)